WASHINGTON—The Environmental Protection Agency will propose a draft rule on Monday seeking a 30% reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions by 2030 from existing power plants based on emission levels from 2005, according to two people who have been briefed on the rule, setting in motion the main piece of President Barack Obama‘s climate-change agenda.

The rule, scheduled to be completed one year from now, will give flexibility to the states, which must implement the rules and submit compliance plans to EPA by June 2016. States can decide how to meet the reductions, including joining or creating new cap-and-trade programs, deploying more renewable energy or ramping up energy-efficiency technologies.

Either buy carbon indulgencies from Global Warming High Priest Al Gore or throw money at Solyndra or go out of business. And soon the American people will be experiencing brownouts and blackouts and power loss that will be blamed on the greedy power companies. There will always be kulaks or counterrevolutionaries or people who are not significantly revolutionary enough who are the cause of misery, never the actual tyrants who engineered it.